For many thousands of years, human beings were at the mercy of the elements. Changing weather conditions forced humans to seek shelter, find ways to protect themselves from the cold and heat, and occasionally to interrupt important life-sustaining activities, such as food gathering and hunting because of severe weather. For many people, the need to adjust was constant. Some weather conditions change relatively slowly, such as with the heating and cooling of the environment with the changing of the seasons. People often dealt with these changes simply by migrating from one area to another, or by making preparations during one season for dealing with changing weather conditions that they knew would come with the next. Other weather conditions change more rapidly, such as the sudden onset of thunderstorm or snowstorm, and humans would have to react to more quickly, presumably based their past experience with similar events. Some weather phenomena, however, are even more violent in nature, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and flash floods, that are very difficult to prepare for even if some advanced warning of their onset has occurred.
Generally speaking, however, people became much more adept at being observant of existing environmental conditions, and using their past experience to predict the onset of certain of these events. The ability to realize that conditions are ripe for a thunderstorm of some force, for example, might give an astute observer a full day or longer to arrange activities so that shelter can be searched for or kept close at hand. While some ancient weather forecasting was tied to superstition and misunderstanding of the scientific principles behind weather conditions, many of these observations enabled them to predict future weather conditions even though they had little understanding of the underlying cause of those conditions.
The development of new and better shelters led to an increase in the safety and comfort of those individuals who were able to obtain them. Instead of relying simply on naturally occurring means of protection from the weather, people began to construct more and more elaborate shelters, some of which provided almost complete protection from ordinary weather events. This, combined with a gradual evolution to non-migratory lifestyles, enabled more and more people to stay relatively sheltered from environmental weather conditions for a large portion of the time. In fact, even with all of our modern technology, we are unable to have a very significant ability to alter weather conditions, so clothing and shelter remain our primary protections against the ravages of foul weather.
Nevertheless, even in modern times, people often spend a great deal of their time in the open outdoors and relatively far away from suitable shelter for all weather conditions. Unfortunately, generations of living in a sheltered environment has reduced the ability of the general population to make, on their own, accurate predictions of possibly dangerous weather activity. While some people who spend a great deal of time out of doors have managed, intentionally or inadvertently, to retain the ability to observe and plan for upcoming or eminent weather conditions, many also venture into the outdoors with very few of these skills.
One of the most violent and interesting weather conditions is lightning. Lightning, which almost everyone is familiar with, is the equalization of uneven accumulated electrical charges between the earth and some location in the atmosphere above it. While lightning may also equalize charges between two points in the atmosphere, such an event rarely poses harm to human beings who are on the ground. While a lightning strike that does reach the earth is a very localized event (as opposed to, for example, a hurricane), the destruction and potential for human injury at that particular location is very high. And the occurrence of lightning strikes, unlike some other weather events, is very common. This means that a person in the vicinity of atmospheric conditions that are conducive to the development of lightning activity are always at an elevated risk.
The atmospheric conditions that are conducive to producing lightning are often, though not universally, involved with violent thunderstorms. Aside from lightning effects, thunderstorms frequently produce heavy rains and strong winds, making observation of local weather conditions difficult. Since the numerous lightning discharges often associated with a thunderstorm will tend to rapidly and randomly occur, determining the user's location relative to a likely lightning strike location may be difficult. Many people are familiar with the method of calculating their own distance from an observed lightning strike by estimating the amount of time that passes from the visual manifestation of the lightning to the aural manifestation of a thunder clap associated with the lightning bolt. Because light travels much faster than sound, the delay between the two can give the observer an indication of how far away the lightning strike occurred. This method, however, may generally be used only to produce a rough estimate, and may be difficult to execute where extensive lightning activity makes it difficult to associate particular thunder claps with observed lightning bolts. The same problem is often inherent in trying to determine the observer's orientation with respect to a particularly heavy occurrence of lightning and the direction of its movement. This is especially a problem where local terrain such as hills and valleys affects the propagation of the sound waves that cause the observers to hear the thunder.
As mentioned above, several modern technological developments have enabled more advanced societies to more accurately predict impending weather conditions, even as they relate to relatively local areas. Not only has the observation of weather conditions become more systematic, that is, by observing and recording certain environmental factors over a wide area, but computer models have been used to evaluate this gathered data to form predictions that were impossible even a hundred years ago. These predictions, however, still tend to be broad in nature and are used to forecast weather for a wide area, which is useful, but does not provide an individual who is outdoors with all the information needed to make appropriate decisions concerning their activities. More specifically, while Van analysis of conditions such as those where thunderstorms and lightning might be expected can be performed, there remains little ability to translate such predictions into useful information for an individual on the ground in the outdoors. This individual is interested not only in the broader weather picture, but in the local weather activity that affects what he is doing at his present location. The present invention is directed to a personal weather station that can use both available data from larger weather forecasting entities and also locally collected data specifically focused on the observer's present location, to create a weather station that is able to provide useful information to an individual, especially with avoiding areas where dangerous lightning strikes may occur.